Sherman Mullin

In a windowless, high-security office in Hawthorne with all the ambience of a bank vault, Northrop Vice President Thomas R. Rooney is spending countless hours secretly scribbling numbers on a chalkboard, trying to settle on his final bid for the biggest jet fighter program in history. The same frenzy of activity is occurring across the basin in Burbank, where Lockheed officials are making preparations to submit their proposal by a Jan.

In a windowless, high-security office in Hawthorne with all the ambience of a bank vault, Northrop Vice President Thomas R. Rooney is spending countless hours secretly scribbling numbers on a chalkboard, trying to settle on his final bid for the biggest jet fighter program in history. The same frenzy of activity is occurring across the basin in Burbank, where Lockheed officials are making preparations to submit their proposal by a Jan.

New President Named at Lockheed's Skunk Works: Executive Vice President Jack S. Gordon, 53, will succeed Sherman N. Mullin, 58, who is retiring as president of Lockheed Corp.'s secret research arm effective March 1, the aerospace giant announced. The Palmdale-based Skunk Works, formally called Lockheed Advanced Development Co., is renowned for creating some of the company's most famous aircraft, including the U-2 spy plane and the F-117A stealth fighter jet.

Re "Power Crisis: Give Us Facts," editorial, March 4: Certainly Californians deserve the facts--they are long overdue. The facts should include explicitly who created this debacle and what has been done to remove them from office. The concept that the state can force a company to sell power at a price significantly below cost, on a sustained basis, is beyond comprehension--it is blatant incompetence. The generation, transmission, distribution and pricing of electrical power is a very mature, very predictable technology.

Re "Up in the Air Over Airport," editorial, April 5: The concept that a major expansion of LAX can and should be made without a major improvement in the county transportation infrastructure is ridiculous. One major radio station spends 10% of its time every day reporting the chaos on the freeways that connect LAX to its users. This is called news. This major issue is being dealt with in a fragmented and incoherent manner. The residents of L.A. County deserve a rational approach to solving this problem and, in the end, they will get it. Attempting to stuff a dumb approach down our throats will not work.

Ann Douglas, in her meandering article (" '50s Redux," Opinion, Aug. 30), seems to be expressing some dissatisfaction with the fact that the United States prevailed in the Cold War. People like Douglas would apparently want us to forget why Russia was an "evil empire." During the 1930s Stalin utilized terror and mass murder, as exhibited in the purges of the Communist Party through the so-called Moscow trials. In 1939 he entered into an alliance with Hitler, agreeing to the partition of Poland between Germany and Russia and allowing Stalin to have a free hand in the eastern Baltics so as to gobble up Estonia, Latvia and Finland, countries which Russia shortly thereafter occupied.

Lockheed will lay off about 400 workers at its Skunk Works facilities in Palmdale and Burbank over the next three months, cutting about 10% from what was expected to be among the few stable aerospace work forces in Southern California, the company disclosed Friday. The Skunk Works, officially called the Lockheed Advanced Development Co.

Re "The Right Microsoft Rx," editorial, June 25: Utopian optimism is alive and well! To believe that a brigade of Justice Department antitrust lawyers will get us better and cheaper software is beyond irrational. This Microsoft trial is one of the great farces of the century. Cheaper and better software will come only when the next small group of brilliant software inventors and entrepreneurs arrives on the scene. That we pay taxes to cover the cost of this obscene drama is depressing.

Lockheed Corp. has selected Sherman N. Mullin to succeed the retiring Ben R. Rich as head of Lockheed Advanced Development Co., the aircraft design and development operation commonly known as the "Skunk Works." Mullin previously was vice president of Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., heading up the company's development of the F-22 advanced tactical fighter. Mullin will remain involved in that project as an adviser.

More than 100 people, mostly civic and business leaders, gathered at Blackbird Airpark Friday for a pep rally in support of Air Force Plant 42, subject of a study to determine whether it should be closed. While the Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center said all along the study was nothing more than a "what if" review, and a recent letter from a top Air Force official confirmed this, officials said the community needs to show its support for keeping Plant 42 operating.